Something's rotten in patents
To invent a novel gene sequence, scientists rearrange the data that codes for collections of enzymes and promoters and other elements, often combining sequences taken from other organisms. As far as I know, no scientist has yet invented a sequence from whole cloth that happens to assemble an enzyme to catalyze a brand new reaction - only discovered
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The problem I worry about with GRMs is that they have produced a "Shipstone" moment for society, and if there are any problems with generational effects, there is no obvious way of putting things right.
The patent thing is the bit enforceable by law. You pointed out to me that it is not enough. Even if we can force folk to open up the genome to public scrutiny, we can't force them to reverse engineer the way any modifications are made.
With GRMs, why bother patenting anything anyway? Deciphering how to construct any particular genome may be a task of a different order of magnitude from understanding the final product, but if they patent the process the patent runs out and the process itself goes into the public domain.
I remain unsure of the best way of dealing with this problem.
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